Designing effective online assessment implementation strategies for tertiary language courses-narratives on preliminary overview of challenges.

The emergence of 21st century education and digital education era has transformed traditional transactional learning which is primarily teacher-centered to a more facilitated independent learning with heavy incorporation of the online mode. Tertiary courses including languages therefore require a set of sound online assessment strategies to cater to the blended/flipped learning synchronously delivered for undergraduates. Within this context, this study aims to investigate present challenges in implementing online language assessment for tertiary language courses and the need to design effective implementation strategies. Before such strategies could be developed, challenges and issues must be identified and mitigated. Via a DELPHI based qualitative approach and stratified purposive sampling, data was elicited from eighteen expert respondents from nine public universities who gave their views and reactions to a set of structured interview questions. Thirteen challenges that fall into four categories of issues were identified. They must be addressed in planning for smooth online language assessment system. The findings also indicate that specific online language assessment guidelines and framework for is deemed necessary to ensure best educational practices are applied to ensure attainment of course and programme outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]